The Academy of Medicine has just announced that there should be “no more hesitation” regarding the vaccination of its children aged 5 to 11 years.
Even though Omicron appears to be less dangerous than other variants, its rapid rollout to global populations tends to pose certain risks. Indeed, more and more specialists point out that the massive distribution of Omicron might give rise to new variants, which may in particular be more virulent. Therefore, theAcademy of Medicine just called parents of children aged 5-11 at ” no longer hesitate » to do them vaccinate once morest the virus Covid-19.
We should “no longer hesitate” to vaccinate children aged 5-11 years
In one joint statement, the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medicine came to ask the French to get vaccinated massively in order to achieve collective immunity as quickly as possible and avoid the emergence of a new variant of Covid-19. In detail, the two companies came to encourage parents to ” no longer hesitate » to have their children aged 5 to 11 vaccinated.
Faced with the rookie essence of the pandemic, in particular via the Omicron variant, the Academies explain that ” As in the United States, this phenomenon is accompanied by a significant increase in daily pediatric hospitalizations: during the second week of 2022, 979 children aged 0 to 9 were hospitalized (source GEODES), nearly 80 % of them with no comorbidity, and 9 deaths have occurred since January 1 (source GEODES) ».
In addition to this, learned societies explain that the proportion of hospitalized children for Covid » remains majority and ” includes a significant proportion of pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndromes (PIMS) with delayed onset in relation to the infection (3 to 12 weeks later) and generally attributable to the Delta variant “. They also emphasize that the low vaccination coverage of 5-11 year olds exposes them to a high level of circulation of the Omicron variant. It is also recalled that the effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for this age group of the population has been confirmed. by real-life studies, American and Israeli, now involving more than 10 million children ».
In conclusion, the specialists consider the benefit/risk ratio favorable on an individual level, given that it limits serious forms. In addition to this, the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medicine recall that this also represents that the vaccination of children has collective benefits in several areas (school, family, mental state, social, etc.), but also a strengthening of herd immunity.
